Patients commonly use medical devices to monitor various biological and/or physiological conditions. For example, patients with diabetes often utilize a blood glucose meter to monitor their blood glucose levels periodically. However, medical devices are also used for monitoring and/or analyzing biological/physiological parameters or conditions such as body fluids or bodily functions (e.g. blood, urine, saliva), bodily signals (e.g. electrocardio-signals, brain waves, blood pressure waves), and/or other bodily stimuli (e.g. respiration) to obtain measurements of blood pressure, blood gases, blood coagulation, electrolytes, cardiovascular activity, drug levels, respiration rate, stress, etc. These medical devices often store measurement data which may be retrieved, archived, and/or analyzed. Physicians, nurses, technicians, and patients typically find such measurement data useful in assessing the patient's health, in assessing the effectiveness of medications and other treatments, and in adjusting a patient's current treatment regime to obtain better health for the patient.
To facilitate retrieval of data, the above medical devices typically include a communications port which allows communication with another device such as a computer. Furthermore, the medical devices are often implemented such that a computing device may control the medical device and adjust various operating parameters via the communications port. However, in order to retrieve the data from the medical device, control the medical device, and/or adjust various operating parameters of the medical device via the communications port, the computing device must be configured to communicate with the medical device via a communications protocol designed for the specific medical device.